Helping David Finish the Move
The doberman across the way, vocal cords cut
can’t stop barking. He rasps and squeaks.
A Mustang with extra wide radials squeals
onto the lot, hits a hard u-turn, throws out
a tsumani of gravel and dust. I tuck my head
cover mouth and nose, think of my mother
who can’t get one full breath any time, her lungs
have so shrunk. Fourteen years ago
the surgeon performing the first tracheostomy
nicked one of her vocal cords. Everything she said
she whispered. She couldn’t laugh. Since the second
operation she holds a small microphone against her throat
mouths her words, low-pitched, robotic.
That dog is committed to its obsession.
I check my watch, wonder if I should worry
when the red Civic Hal willed him cruises in
David beaming behind the wheel. He says
he’s tired, another death watch, another friend
slipping over. His own symptoms are mild
night sweats and thrush. He’s lost ten pounds
but not to worry, he’s eating well.
Inside the two-room warehouse studio
David shows me what stays and what goes.
I trudge in and out with boxes of books
and records, a sewing machine, odds and ends
of someone else’s life.
When my mother tried
to kill herself she swallowed forty-five
Seconal. They pumped her stomach but nothing
of the drug remained. She shouldn’t have lived.
She cried and cried.
Some afternoons, suffocated
by pain I cannot name, unable to cry, I walk the path
at Waterfront Park, watch wind whip the Bay into waves
that shatter against the rocks, spraying me with brine.
Far out, one windsurfer skims the whitecaps.
I imagine the force he expends balancing upright
the ache in his hands, calves. My nerves thin
staying with him.
The barking dog calls me back.
David steps outside, locks the door behind him.
After eight years under Quonset ceilings arching
wall to wall, one room pink, the other sky-blue
how will he contain everything in a downtown
studio apartment? His small teeth gleam, the word
necessity floats in the air between us, like the music
he composes, weaving desire and rage; the patience
he brings to each dying man, full body hugs until
the last light; the joy passing through them.
For the moment I’m at my mother’s side
who can’t live, who won’t die, whom I cling to
and push away. Then I’m here with David
embracing good-bye in the dark. Necessity
I answer, taking the word in my mouth
a pebble to loosen my tongue.